Award on these airlines are still available using other Star Alliance frequent flier programs (just testing their websites). It is only United’s unwillingness or inability to pay for award tickets on these airlines that makes them to deny MileagePlus members’ availability to redeem on them due to IT “issues” (read cash).

Conclusion

Seems that the old United has made a comeback. It was fun to see how they randomly block award space on certain weekdays. Now, they have blocked entire airlines (four at the moment), of which three are in Asia.

This just erodes the trust that members have in United and their frequent flier program MileagePlus.